ST JOHN’S—West In­dies Un­der-19s head coach Graeme West does not be­lieve the side’s wretched re­sults in last month’s Tri-Na­tions Se­ries is cause for ma­jor con­cern.

In fact, the Eng­lish­man said the cam­paign had pro­vid­ed a cru­cial learn­ing curve for the Young Windies and shed im­por­tant light on ar­eas which need­ed to be im­proved on ahead of the ICC Un­der-19 World Cup in South Africa from Jan­u­ary 17 to Feb­ru­ary 9.

The Ki­mani Melius-led unit lost four of their six match­es in the 50-over se­ries in An­tigua, which was al­so con­test­ed by Eng­land Un­der-19s and Sri Lan­ka Un­der-19s.

“The en­cour­ag­ing as­pect of the Tri-Se­ries was that the team got in­to strong po­si­tions in five out of the six games that were played, the bowl­ing unit func­tioned well and was backed up by some im­pres­sive field­ing that was en­hanced by the in­tro­duc­tion of field­ing spe­cial­ist, Julien Foun­tain,” West con­tend­ed.

“The bats­men came out of the se­ries with a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the skills they will need to de­liv­er in or­der to achieve the team tar­gets that have been set and the camp (in Jo­han­nes­burg start­ing Sat­ur­day) will cer­tain­ly fo­cus heav­i­ly in these ar­eas.”

He added: “The six games has giv­en each play­er a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties they will need to ful­fill for the team to suc­ceed.

“Equal­ly as im­por­tant was the time the play­ers and coach­es spent to­geth­er to dis­cuss, re­view and re­flect on the crick­et that was played and iden­ti­fy how each play­er can move their game for­ward and give more to the team.”

The West In­dies Un­der-19s de­part­ed the Caribbean on New Year’s Day to be­gin prepa­ra­tion for the World Cup, which they won back in 2016 with Shim­ron Het­my­er at the helm.

The one-week camp in Jo­han­nes­burg will pre­cede the team’s two of­fi­cial warm-up match­es that will see them take on Cana­da on Jan­u­ary 13 and Scot­land two days lat­er.

West said the camp formed a cru­cial com­po­nent of the squad’s prepa­ra­tions, en­sur­ing “the play­ers re­ceive am­ple time to ac­cli­ma­tize and more im­por­tant­ly work on the fo­cus ar­eas that came out of the Tri-Se­ries.”

West In­dies Un­der-19s have been in­stalled in a tough Group B head­lined by three-time win­ners Aus­tralia, along with Eng­land and min­nows Nige­ria.

At the last show­piece two years ago in New Zealand, West In­dies lost two of their three pre­lim­i­nary round match­es to miss out on a place in the quar­ter-fi­nals. (CMC)

Squad: Ki­mani Melius (cap­tain), Ny­eem Young, Ash­mead Nedd, Leonar­do Julien, Kevlon An­der­son, Daniel Beck­ford, Matthew Forde, Joshua James, An­to­nio Mor­ris, Mbe­ki Joseph, Avinash Ma­habirs­ingh, Kirk McKen­zie, Ra­mon Sim­monds, Matthew Patrick, Jaden Seales; (tech­ni­cal staff) Graeme West (coach), Ken­ny Ben­jamin (as­sis­tant coach), Dwain Gill (man­ag­er), Di­nesh Ma­habir (an­a­lyst), Khevyn Williams (phys­io­ther­a­pist), Mar­tin Gal­ly­er (strength & con­di­tion­ing coach), Ju­lian Foun­tain (field­ing coach).